The Importance of Cross-Device Customer Journey Mapping

Your customers don’t simply buy your product in-store anymore. In fact, the path your customers take to purchasing your product is more twisted than ever. Maybe they see a TV ad and look up your website on their smartphone, only to end up purchasing on their laptops. Maybe they research your company on their tablet but end up purchasing in store. The customer journey isn’t a one-step process; in fact, only 2% of customers buy on their first visit to a website.

With so many devices and advertising methods these days, many customers can fall off the path to purchase if you’re not careful to steer them the right way. Help your customer make a purchase by leveraging the three C’s: create, capture, and calibrate.

Create

Create consistency across all devices to account for consumers that switch between devices when they’re shopping online (67% of consumers move between devices when shopping online, and 98% of those switch between devices in a single day). You sacrifice potential customers if your ecommerce site isn’t responsive to different devices; two out of three smartphone users say a mobile friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company’s product or service, and 74% say they’re more likely to return to the site.

Capture

Capture your consumers’ attention right off the bat, and hold onto it. We’ve heard about the notoriously short attention span of goldfish, but at nine seconds, goldfish have an attention span that’s one full second longer than that of humans. Strive for response times of 0.1 seconds on your site; that way, your consumers feel gratified by instantaneous response. One second is still acceptable and keeps the user’s flow of thinking uninterrupted. However, a 1-5 second response can lead to your user becoming distracted and uninterested in your site. Develop your content so that it loads quickly, and test your response time across devices.

Calibrate

Calibrate for customer aperture. Aperture means catching the consumer in the right mood and at the right time, and it includes factors about the buyer such as location, attitude, goal, and more. It’s a very personal aspect of shopping, and you can address that by using real-time data and marketing to respond to your customers in the moment. Customers appreciate the personalization; in fact, real-time marketing increases conversion rates by an average of 26%.

Your customers take very different paths to purchase your product, and some may get lost along the way. Use the three C’s to help them find their way to your product.

Cross-Device Customer Journey Mapping – An infographic by the team at Signal

Tolearn more about ecommerce, attribution and valuable digital marketing insights, you may want to join us at the Acquisio Summit this July 29-30th, 2015.